Chapter Thirty-Nine
JT was exhausted when she got home. Between the cold and the several races around the track in the snow, she was worn out. So, when she walked into the kitchen and found her mom and dad sitting at the table doing the crossword puzzle, she didn’t mean to pick a fight.
Her mom didn’t look up when she spoke. “There’s coffee in the pot if you want it. Your siblings got home a while ago and took the kids out.”
JT’s dad looked up from the paper. “You look tired.”
JT turned her back on him and walked to the pot to pour herself a cup of coffee. With each step she got more annoyed. “Thanks, Dad.”
Her mom popped her head up. “Don’t be snippy. He’s just pointing out a fact. You look tired.”
JT sucked in a breath. She should not fight with this woman. It never ended well. “Maybe if I wasn’t on a couch I would sleep better.”
“What? Are you complaining about the free accommodations?” her mom said, her voice with an edge.
“Of course not. It’s great that you gave my room away and put me in the cellar. Totally great.”
Her dad shared a look with her mom, which only infuriated JT further. Something about being home turned her back into a teenager with rage coursing through her veins.
“Emerson said something about the contest this morning, how did it go?”
The coffee in JT’s mug rippled as she shook with anger. She set the mug down on the counter. “How did it go? Ali and I set the fastest time on the course, twice.”
“Oh? That’s nice.”
JT couldn’t hold in her anger any longer.
“Know what would have been nice? You two being there to see it. But I know, you will literally fly halfway around the world to go to some show but you can’t be bothered to come to an event where I might do something amazing.
You couldn’t do it for the final goddamned Olympics so I don’t know why I would think you would bother to come watch me this morning.
Except maybe because you came to the stupid gingerbread decorating contest so you could ooh and ahh about Emerson’s design skills with icing! ”
“Jasmine…”
“Stop calling me Jasmine!”
Her mom blinked. “It’s your name.”
“And you know I hate it. I have asked you, for my entire lifetime, to call me JT. But you insist on calling me by that stupid Disney princess name that I have hated for my entire life.”
“But I love your name.”
JT sighed. “Yes, you love the name and you love art and you love people who are good at art. But do you love me? Because you never show up for me. You leave the Olympics early. You only come to contests involving artistic ability—which you know I don’t have.
You skip the event that you had to know I was most likely to excel in.
Why? Why do you hate watching me do things I enjoy so much? ”
Her parents exchanged a mystified look. “You think we don’t support you?”
JT felt like she was going insane. “Of course you don’t!
You missed most of my games in high school.
Once I was old enough to be on the team and get bused to games, you stopped coming.
You weren’t there when I won the National Championship in college.
You weren’t there when I won the Kazmaier.
You are never there! What am I supposed to think? ”
JT took a deep breath.
“And then when I’m here you make all kinds of cracks about how I never come home. Do you have any idea why that might be true?”
Her mom looked close to either ripping JT’s head off or crying. It was hard to tell.
“If you had come to my games in high school, you would have heard the shit I heard. You would have heard opposing players and their parents calling me slurs, trying to kill me out on the ice, saying the most vile stuff you can think of. You would have known what I was going through if you had bothered to come out of your bubble.”
JT’s dad swallowed before standing up. He took off his glasses to wipe his face. “We did come to your games. Maybe you don’t remember, but we came.”
JT tried to remember. She was sure he was wrong, sure he was lying.
“We came to the game you had against Valley Regional. We sat in the stands and heard what they were saying about you. We hoped you couldn’t hear them. We hoped the glass was thick enough to send their words reflecting back into the crowd.”
JT’s mom put a hand on his arm. “It was too hard, honey. It was too hard for us to sit there and listen to what people were saying about you.”
“What?” JT’s voice came out a whisper.
Her dad sighed. “People were saying awful stuff and there was nothing we could do about it. We didn’t want to walk out in the middle of the game. So, from then on, we made excuses.”
JT leaned against the counter feeling like she had whiplash. She never knew why they skipped her games. “But why didn’t you say something? You could have told me instead of letting me assume you didn’t care about my sport. Or me.”
Her mom pressed her lips together. “Maybe we should have told you, but it would have meant we’d have to say what people were saying in the stands. We didn’t want you to know.”
“I knew!” JT said, almost shouting. “I knew the shit people were saying about me. They said it in the stands and to my face. One lady yelled at me when I was getting on our team bus!” The memories flooded back so fast that she was hit by a wave of emotion.
“I had to deal with it alone because you two thought it was too hard for you to hear?”
“I’m sorry,” her dad said in a low voice.
“It was our job to protect you, and every time we were there it felt like we were failing you. We didn’t want to make you not play; you loved it so much…but it was so painful to listen to people say those things.”
JT’s head was spinning. “I don’t understand. That was ten years ago. Why not come to the home games where you could sit with people you knew? And why not come to my college games? Once I was on a women’s team, why didn’t you come then?”
Her mom crossed her arms over her chest, making her look less defiant than small and cold. “It was your place, not ours. We didn’t understand the game. We didn’t understand sports or your passion for it.”
“Then fake it! I’ve spent enough time with little kids to know you have to fake being interested in a shitload of things!
Bugs and dirt and whatever god-awful book they want you to read for the four thousandth time!
But you fake it. You pretend to be interested in the bug or the terrible book.
It matters to you because they matter to you!
You couldn’t even do that for me. Instead, you gave all your time and attention to Jonny and Emerson. There was nothing left for me!”
Her parents were quiet. They sat at the table and fiddled with the paper. Finally, JT’s dad spoke. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry we weren’t there when you needed us.”
JT appreciated the apology, but she wasn’t finished being pissed off. “You know, somebody told me that it’s not the kid’s job to make their parents care about them. It wasn’t my job to make you understand sports or the fact that I’m really fucking good at them. That was your job.”
Her mom looked up, her eyes wet. “You’re right. It was our job.” She cleared her throat. “It still is.”
JT deflated. Her anger wasn’t gone, but some of her willingness to fight with her parents had dissipated. “If you know that, why didn’t you come this morning?”
Her parents shared a look but couldn’t do anything more than shrug. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t think it occurred to us to come.”
JT pushed herself away from the counter.
There was nothing to say. Her parents didn’t even think that they should come to watch her.
Yes, it was a stupid little competition.
But they came for Emerson and Jonathan. They came to watch their first two kids kick ass at the gingerbread event.
Maybe they came because they knew how well they would do or maybe they came because they understood art.
But for whatever reason, they showed up for her siblings but not for her.
She wished it didn’t hurt. She wished she could brush it off the way she brushed off opposing players talking shit in the middle of the game.
But in a game, she could do something about the trash talk.
She could make them shut up by scoring a goal or kicking their asses up and down the ice.
With her parents, there was nothing to do to show them they were wrong.
They weren’t there to see her kick ass, and talking trash didn’t seem like the right way to deal with her parents or their disinterest.
It left her feeling powerless, and she hated feeling that way.
She was strong, confident and one of the best athletes on the planet.
After the Olympics, people stopped her in the airport and congratulated her.
People asked to see her medal. Little kids stared at her with their big eyes filled with wonder at the sight of her.
But not her parents. They weren’t even in the country to see her dip her head to receive her medal.
They weren’t there to listen to the national anthem while they raised the flag.
They missed all of that. And she wished it hurt them half as much as it hurt her.
But until that morning she had never seen them express an ounce of regret for missing her successes.
It was like they didn’t think about her at all unless she was at home.
And then it was all comments about her lack of artistic talents and how infrequently she visited.
“I’m tired,” JT said, walking toward the cellar door. “I’ll be napping in the dungeon if anyone needs me.”